India Will Be 1st Country To Dissociate Healthcare From Affluence: Dr Devi Shetty At Republic Summit

Cardiac surgeon and entrepreneur Dr Devi Shetty, while speaking at the Republic Summit 2024 spoke about the importance of universal health insurance and India’s giant strides towards affordable healthcare. In his address, he highlighted that India has the potential to become world’s largest health insurance market. He urged hospitals to become better help givers for people, so that they would be able to trust them.

Dr. Devi Shetty about healthcare

Dr. Shetty, addressing the audience at Republic Summit, said that India will become the first country to dissociate Healthcare from affluence in the world. Rather than the commonly predicted range of 50-70 years, Dr. Shetty said that this will happen in less than 5-7 years. This, the doctor explained, is due to the recent changes happening in India.

Why is free healthcare with taxpayers money not possible in India?

Dr. Shetty pointed out differences as to why free healthcare in India with taxpayers money will not work in this country. He believes the policymakers will realise this due to 3 things.

• No big country in the world, even as influential as the USA, can offer free healthcare with taxpayers money. Only small countries with a tiny population are able to do that.
• Every country with free healthcare has a Tax to GDP ratio which is very high - 25%-45% and India has 11%-11.5%, so it is not possible.
• Countries with free healthcare spend more than 10% of their GDP on healthcare and India on the other hand spends 1.5%.

Universal health insurance is the solution

So, how can India bridge the gap between money and healthcare? “We need to look at other options and the other option is Universal Health Insurance to everyone at a price that people can afford.”, says Dr. Shetty.

The biggest reason that he points out about health insurance not being popular in India is the lack of trust. People do not trust health insurance as there is trust deficit between the three stakeholders - insurance companies, hospitals and the patient. His solution for that is hospitals becoming health insurance providers.